Junior doctors have taken on much more work than they can handle during the pandemic they say. They blame hospital administrations and senior doctors for their fatigue.
Jammu: Amid the pandemic, patient care has taken a significant hit in Jammu’s government hospital. “Senior doctors not regularly attending to their patients has led to junior doctors doing most of the work. It has led to them being overworked,” said an intern doctor working at the hospital. A junior doctor, appointed mainly in the Covid-19 wards at Government Medical College (GMC) Jammu, said, “Negligence on the part of the administration has also played a massive role in this. They have not kept a check on the senior doctors to see if they’re attending to their patients or not.”
“The administration also didn’t make proper doctors’ rosters, which led to confusion and doctors being overworked. No appropriate steps were taken to reduce doctors’ exposure to Covid-19 Doctors from other departments were also being rushed to work on Covid-19 patients, which led to much exposure,” said Dr Simran Kaur, appointed at GMC Jammu in the Covid-19 wards. Rostering is the process of tracking which doctor attends to which patient in a day.
Patients aren’t receiving the proper care due to these increased burdens on the doctors. “I was admitted to the hospital for over a week and was visited by a senior doctor just once,” said Shivang Puri, a recently recovered coronavirus patient. “As most senior doctors were hesitant in attending to the patients, junior doctors have to take care of it all,” said a senior doctor working in GMC Jammu.
A junior doctor working on COVID-19 patients said, “GMC Jammu is the only government hospital in Jammu and all of the patient load of the region ison this hospital. Hence, a highly increased load of patients has always been there on GMC Jammu. When we talk about the COVID-19 situation, an already overloaded hospital was put further under pressure. Junior doctors had to do more physical work as compared to the seniors in the wards.”
The situation has started to improve recently, with senior doctors getting more involved and better equipment being allotted, she further added.
Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha has also observed this on his surprise visit to the hospital.
